Young, Michael Alan. OBE businessman

Early Career

Michael Young graduated from the University of York in 1972 where he read politics. He subsequently worked on the International Desk of the Conservative Research Department and became a foreign affairs adviser to Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, to former Prime Minister Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher (in opposition), and to Shadow Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. Young resigned from the Conservative Party following Thatcher's 1979 election victory and joined the Liberal Democrats. He fought the Penrith and the Border seat of Conservative MP William Whitelaw, for the SDP-Liberal Alliance, in both the general election of June 1983 and the July 1983 by-election that followed Whitelaw's elevation to the House of Lords. In 1987's general election he stood as Liberal Democrat candidate for the Isle of Wight but the seat was lost to the Conservatives.

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